


Bless This Mess

by Ghost_in_the_Hella



Series: To All of You (prompt fills) [17]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: AU where Victoria didn't bully Kate, Aged-Up Character(s), F/F, Future Fic, Prompt Fill, Victoria is a terrible roommate, chasemarsh, original feline character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27957668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghost_in_the_Hella/pseuds/Ghost_in_the_Hella
Summary: It’s been almost five years since Victoria officially deemed herself incapable of cohabitation and gave up on attempting to share her living space (it’s not like she can’t afford rent on her own, after all, so why subject others to her awful living habits?). Living with Kate after living alone for so long is… It’s wonderful, honestly. Weird, definitely, but wonderful.---Kate is a perfect roommate. Victoria is... trying. So hard.
Relationships: Victoria Chase/Kate Marsh
Series: To All of You (prompt fills) [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1656067
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	Bless This Mess

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DMMeeble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DMMeeble/gifts).



> DMMeeble prompted me on tumblr with "Loving you is easy. Living with you takes some getting used to." and chasemarsh. 
> 
> Tbh, I never expected to write chasemarsh, so this one was a bit of a challenge. I've never been a big fan of ships where one character has bullied the other, especially to the point that Victoria bullied Kate in canon. I almost noped out on this one until I realized I could set it in an AU where Victoria and Kate didn't go to school together and therefore Kate was never Victoria's victim. Then age them up and put Victoria in therapy so she's working on the issues that led to her bullying. Et voila.

Victoria’s never been an easy person to live with. She knows this about herself. A lifetime of excessive familial wealth compounded by parental neglect has left her utterly incapable of being a good roommate. She tends to forget that people who do not keep her insomniac hours do not generally appreciate loud music after midnight. That if you’re sharing a DVR with someone else they think it rude if you delete their shows to make room for your own before they’ve had a chance to watch them. She forgets that dishes left scattered around the apartment will not migrate to the dishwasher by themselves and will, in fact, grow mold if left to their own devices for long enough. That dirty clothes, too, do not magically launder themselves when you do not have servants to take care of them for you. That roommates, for that matter, are not servants and do not appreciate being treated as such. 

She’s lost more roommates than she can easily keep count of, honestly. 

And so Victoria has gotten used to living alone. It’s not necessarily her preference - she can’t cook worth a damn, for one thing, and she gets lonely much too easily - but it has long been her lot.

Until she met Kate. Beautiful, sweet Kate, who’s never had a roommate flee the apartment in terror or in fury once in her life. Good, kind Kate who never raises her voice, never turns aside a person in need, never has a rude word to say about anyone. Lovely, sensitive Kate who opens up to strangers like they’re her oldest friends, who trusts so easily and so completely, whose smile could make the sun rise on command.

She’s exactly the kind of girl Victoria would have absolutely tortured in high school without knowing why she felt so compelled to ruin her life. But Victoria’s twenty-eight now; she’s a grown-ass woman with a masters degree who hasn’t lived under her parents’ roof in almost a decade and who has finally found a decent therapist, and so when she met this humble, gentle, adorable woman she asked her out for coffee like a normal human being instead of tearing her down like the closeted, self-loathing bully she used to be.

One coffee date turned into weekly coffee dates, which turned into twice weekly dinner dates, which turned into changing their NodFace statuses together, which turned into Kate packing up her ludicrously undersized apartment and her cat and moving into Victoria’s ludicrously oversized apartment with her.

It’s been almost five years since Victoria officially deemed herself incapable of cohabitation and gave up on attempting to share her living space (it’s not like she can’t afford rent on her own, after all, so why subject others to her awful living habits?). Living with Kate after living alone for so long is… It’s wonderful, honestly. Weird, definitely, but wonderful. Kate’s aged and one-eyed rescue cat, Nicodemus, has already claimed Victoria’s most comfortable recliner as his own property, clawing the suede to shit and coating it with a thick layer of white fur. He sleeps at Kate’s feet most nights, and the sound of his purring is almost as restful as Kate’s soft and even breathing. Kate makes tea at least twice a day - usually Irish breakfast in the morning and camomile or something fruity at night - so the kitchen always smells warm and welcoming. When Kate has time she cooks, and when she doesn’t they either have leftovers or Victoria orders in. Kate never forgets her turn to clean out Nico’s litter box, never forgets to put her dishes in the dishwasher, never neglects to put her laundry right in the hamper where it belongs.

Kate’s great to live with. The perfect girlfriend and the perfect roommate. 

Victoria is… trying. So hard. She’s trying to remember to at least put her dishes in the sink or the washer instead of leaving them around the house until she runs out of clean dishes. She’s trying to make sure her laundry actually finds its way into the hamper, and she succeeds about eight times out of ten. She’s trying to remember to feed the cat when it’s her turn, to not delete Kate’s shows off the DVR, to not make too much noise when she wakes up in the middle of the night, to only take up one space in the driveway. She’s trying to clean up her own messes. She’s trying not to take advantage of Kate’s generosity.

Victoria is trying, but Victoria is failing. She realizes this when she returns from her morning jog and finds Kate curled up with Nico in “his” chair with her morning cup of tea and tears rolling down her cheeks. The coffee table is crowded with photography books, Victoria’s coffee cups from the last three (at least) days, and the Chinese takeout containers from last night that Victoria had sworn up and down she would put in the fridge. The smell of expired Chinese food nearly drowns out the earthy scent of Kate’s tea completely. Beneath that, Victoria can smell the litter box she was supposed to scoop out this morning before she left because it’s her turn and she forgot again. There are several places on the floor where it looks like Victoria melted into a puddle and left her clothes behind as they fell from her liquified body.

Kate looks up over the mess to Victoria, her sweet brow creased and her gentle eyes shimmering with tears. 

“Katie…” Victoria’s eyes dart around the room, taking in the now obvious overwhelm. “I’m sorry. I’ll clean it up. I’ll fix it. I’m so sorry.”

Kate gestures helplessly at the disaster of a room around her. “Tori, I… This is horrible. I can’t relax like this. I’ll help, but I can’t do all of it. I’ve got work in an hour, and I can’t–”

Tears spring to Victoria’s eyes. Her head is spinning. She’s been here before too many times: a roommate cowering in horror of the trainwreck that is Victoria’s life, absolutely at her wit’s end with Victoria’s failings. “Katie, I swear, I’ll do better, I promise. Please don’t leave. I know I’m a mess, and this is all my fault, and you can’t take it anymore, but please don’t hate me. Please stay with me; I can’t lose you.”

“Hey,” Kate says tenderly, uncurling her hand from around Nico to beckon Victoria over. “Tori, sweetheart, I’m not leaving and I don’t hate you. I love you. Come here.”

Victoria wades through the mess and kneels by Kate’s side. Nico’s cool, wet nose sniffs at her forehead a couple of times before he loses interest and resumes sleeping on Kate’s lap, blissfully oblivious to Victoria’s heart breaking in her chest. She rests her head gratefully on the soothing warmth of Kate’s thigh, and Kate’s hand rests lightly in her hair, stroking it soothingly. “I’m sorry, Katie. I know I’m a nightmare to live with. I should have warned you before you moved in so you wouldn’t be stuck with me.” Tears weigh down Victoria’s eyelashes as her brain counts up her countless failings as a life partner and as a human being. “I don’t know why you love me,” she mumbles. “I’m a miserable person. I’m unloveable.”

“Victoria Chase,” Kate says softly but in a voice that brooks no argument. “You are not unloveable. Loving you is easy.” She glances around and giggles a bit despite her red-rimmed eyes. “Living with you takes some getting used to.” She brushes Victoria’s bangs out of her teary eyes gently enough that Victoria can actually believe that she is beloved. “But hey. We’ll both work on it. Together. Okay?”

“Okay,” Victoria sighs into the comfort of Kate’s skin, and she lets the tension drain from her shoulders. She isn’t perfect, and she never will be. But she’s becoming a better person every day. And if Kate is willing to stay with her through it, maybe she can become a better roommate, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to DMMeeble for the prompt and to all of you for reading! Comments and kudos (and tumblr prompts!) are greatly appreciated.


End file.
